


Armageddon't Anniversary

by blueberrysebby



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alpha Centauri - Freeform, Anniversary of the Armageddon't, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Flirting, Aziraphale Needs a Hug (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Aziraphale's True Form (Good Omens), Canon Compliant, Crowley Has Long Hair (Good Omens), Crowley Needs a Hug (Good Omens), Crowley is not an incubus, Crowley's True Form (Good Omens), Cutesy, Deleted Scenes, Everyone Needs A Hug, Flowers, Fluff, Hair, Hair Braiding, Hugging!, In case you were wondering, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Kinda, M/M, Michael Sheen says fanfiction rights, Mutual Pining, No Smut, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Oblivious Crowley (Good Omens), Oscar Wilde's diaries, Outer Space, Post-Canon, Referenced - Freeform, References to Oscar Wilde, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Crowley (Good Omens), Stars, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Touch-Starved, Touching, True Forms, bookshop opening, chocolates and flowers crowley, equally, post-armageddon't, they truly are idiots, you know the one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 00:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20300182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberrysebby/pseuds/blueberrysebby
Summary: A year has passed since Armageddon't, and unlike a certain time before, Crowley won't let that opportunity pass unused.





	Armageddon't Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

> I can't seem to stop writing and drawing Ineffable Husbands fluff.  
I don't have to, I say to myself.  
The Sheen has my back.

** Armageddon’t Anniversary **

I peer through the clear, warmly lit bookshop windows, one hand on the wine-red, rain-bedewed windowsill, the drops on it like an army of heavenly eyes. I bounce on the balls of my feet in my rainbow-iridescent black pointy boots, trying hard to catch a glimpse at the counter, but there seems to be no one there. The shop shines golden from the inside out now that it’s dark. Today was a blueish, pouring August day and there was no sunset, unlike a year ago. But even without considering that, I’d prefer this view to any sunset. Not that I take any interest in sunsets anyway. Not officially. Not the best time to lurk. But what does ‘official’ even matter these days? Sunsets make me…sleepy.

I turn the corner to the shop’s door. Of course, the ‘Closed’ sign is in the window, it’s at least 9 p.m. So I lift my hand and rap on the glass in a rhythm that I hope is somehow recognizable. Something in me still expects to hear Aziraphale’s voice calling “sorry, we’re closed” from somewhere in the back of the shop, sound waves broken by walls of age-old tomes. But there isn’t any reaction. I put my left hand on the round brass handle, just when the door swings open and pulls me onto Aziraphale, and I almost trip onto his white fluffy-socked foot. Startled, I swing back and nearly slam the door back shut, but Aziraphale holds onto it from the other side. He shuffles a step back, lest his cream-white, soft socks – I’ve never seen him out of shoes since before Christ, gosh – touch the wet step.

“Crowley!”

His face lights up and I wring a throaty sound that could easily have been mistaken for a sob into a crooked smile. Flick off my sunglasses much less smoothly than I’d intended. They stay hooked on my ear for an awkward second before I can fold them and stuff them into my breast pocket in a cumbersome one-hand movement. My right hand is occupied behind my back.

“Angel!”

My voice cracks, then abandons me completely. Smooth, really, demonically smooth. About the same level of smooth as Beelzebub’s skin.

“I hadn’t expected you to show up this late”, the angel explains, fittingly gesturing to his socks. I sniff; the dampness’s got into my nose, it seems.

“’S been a while”, I try again and notice I’ve failed even before Aziraphale says:

“You dropped in two days ago, Crowley! Back in the day we used to not see each other for a thousand years at a time!”

I know. I know, and I cannot even imagine it now.

“Did I – I mean, yeah, I…I know.” Cool and raspy, J., try cool and raspy. I still sound like I was about to start crying the next second. Aziraphale’s smile is lopsided and sweetly…insecure, somehow. I bounce again, two-three-four.

Then I say “There’s something I…” and he says “Don’t you want to…”, and then we both stop short. I wiggle my right-hand fingers because I don’t want my sweaty palm to stick to and ruin…what I’m holding.

“Oh, for someone’s sake, come in already!”

Aziraphale steps aside and I proceed onto the door mat; it’s like a rather awkward dance move. I hesitate a moment, then I slip my shoes off. Won’t hurt either, and I don’t want to stain the old Persian carpets in the back of the shop. Which is where Aziraphale is silently walking, almost floating, and I do what I do best, which is to saunter after him.

“Wine?” he gratuitously asks me.

“Please”, I reply, and it’s the first time tonight I sound like I’m intending to sound. Still, I keep standing while he pours each of us a glass, pacing vaguely across a space of two or three feet width.

“Angel?” I need to say it now. He looks over his shoulder, hands me the glass. “You know why I’m here?”

“To get drunk?” he suggests with a tiny humoured shrug.

I cast my eyes down on my glass.

“Where’s your other hand?” he asks suddenly.

“Yeah, uh, about that…” I stutter. Damn it. Take a sip first. Good. Better.

“Sit down.”

I shake my head, maybe a bit too enthusiastically.

“Angel…a year ago exactly today, we saved the world together.”

“Oh, right!” he gasps, smiles, and adds: “Although I wouldn’t quite put it like that, it was actually Adam who…”

“I know, Angel.”

I realize that maybe I say ‘Angel’ far too often, should just use his name instead, like normal people, normal friends would, but I like calling him Angel.

“But we did help, didn’t we?!”

“I guess so. But what…”

“I brought you something. An…anniversary gift, of sorts.”

“Crowley!” He sounds equally exasperated and endeared, and I…I like it when he sounds like that. Which he does rather often. But maybe not to this extent.

“Now, I…I…” Suddenly he’s flustered, sets his glass on the table, and goes, cheek-wise, from a mild rosé to a light red. “I’m afraid I…don’t have anything for you, though…”

The fact that he feels he has to give me something in return is – well, I tend to chortle a lot, internally, for the greatest possibly variety of reasons, but I rarely actually vocalize the chortle, and definitely, usually, not for sheer want of words. Enough now. I shrug it off and proffer my cold, damp right hand, which over the course of the last quarter of an hour has become even colder and damper than the rest of me.

The rather flimsy bow on top of the little package, light pink velvet, looks a bit crumpled, just like the daisies, the tiny white roses and the forget-me-nots I stuck under the string. But they’re all still there, that counts, right?! I told them to stay fresher.

Aziraphale has his hand stretched out but his mouth stands open and for a few seconds, he doesn’t move. Then he barely so much as mouths “Crow-“ and gently takes hold of the package, which consists of two books and a box.

“You know”, I say more or less just to break the silence, “when you first opened the shop, I…I was there, I’d bought…chocolates and flowers and all, but then Gabriel was there, and I left again and I –“

I want to tell him that I threw away both chocolates and flowers but I’m afraid that would be too much of a shock and ruin the moment, so I break off and look up from my hands and back at Aziraphale. He has untied the velvet string and placed it carefully across his thigh along with the flowers, and after quickly but thoroughly assessing the contents of the box – an assortment of handmade Belgian truffles, actually purchased in Brussels – his eyes fall on the cover of the first book, which is white linen with fading light pink floral décor and no title – but as soon as he sees the handwriting on the first page I know that he knows, and for a moment I think I can see more eyes opening inside his two actual eyes. Seeing the second book doesn’t make it any better. He seems to shine from the inside. His eyes, however many, sparkle. The first book is the only one of Oscar Wilde’s diaries he was missing – all the rest, Oscar had personally left him -, the second one is a first edition “Picture of Dorian Gray”, autographed by the author, with a little doodle that looks oddly like Aziraphale’s profile.

“Crowley, I…” He sounds a little choked up. Then he opens and closes his mouth a few times and finally grabs his glass and takes a sip. I can see his lower lip wobble the tiniest bit when he swallows.

“Crowley, I really don’t know what to say…”

“Ungh”, I make, with a throw-away hand wave. “Never mind. Just a little, unh, gesture. Wasn’t that hard getting them anyway.”

No, only that one had been in a museum in New Zealand and the other with a private collector in Alaska. Neither of them had been intending to sell. I spent the best part of the past three months figuring this out. But Aziraphale had told me about those books, the one missing diary and his first author-signed and -doodled “Dorian Gray” from a rather winey evening with Oscar, a while ago, and got really quite emotional over them, and I hadn’t been able to forget.

“I don’t believe you”, says the angel, mildly defiantly, and I can barely suppress a proud smile. At least he doesn’t believe me.

“So, Oscar and you definitely had quite a bit in common in terms of, erm, taste, didn’t you?” I remark, referring to the design of the diary. Aziraphale looks up again and I’m not sure, but I think I he blushes even more. Oh. What’s up with that?

“What is it?”

The angel blinks nervously, says nothing and starts fiddling with the flowers on his white-chocolate-coloured trouser leg. Well, now I’m intrigued.

“Come ooon, you can tell _me_!”

I ogle him with what I hope are slightly snake-ish puppy eyes. I have a hunch that -

“Oh, if you must know”, Aziraphale huffs plaintively – yes, exactly that. “I think…I think he had a sort of…_crush_ on me.”

He looks sheepishly guilty. Puts his finger pads together and spreads his hands. I can’t keep my mouth from twisting into an endeared, amused smile.

“_A crush_?!” I tease him.

“Yes, Crowley. A crush. _An infatuation_.”

He pouts. I take a sip and give into my curiosity. To be honest, it’s curiosity mixed with –

“And what did you _do_ about that?”

The last thing I expect at this point is a sudden cackle – but that’s exactly what I get.

“_Do about it_?!”

The angel makes it sound like I’d just suggested that he throw away a perfectly good piece of cake. Utterly absurd. Something in me clenches oddly.

“Oh dear”, I mutter, suddenly wishing I’d never asked. “Oh gosh. I – whatever. Don’t tell me. I don’t actually…want to know.”

His look bespeaks confusion.

“Well, there’s nothing to _tell_, Crowley. I didn’t do anything. Of course I didn’t. Whatever should I have done?!”

He looks seriously bewildered. Then suddenly his face scrunches up.

“Crowley, are you suggesting I – Oh, I’m an angel, for goodness’ sake! I could never…! That’s definitely _your_ department.”

He throws me a glare and then casts down his eyes. “You probably…” He does an exasperated wiggly gesture. It makes me smile; all of it. He’s just so – what is the word…?

“Um, Angel, actually…I don’t perform that sort of temptation. Not…on myself, at least. I mean, sometimes I make people tempt each other. And maybe”, I wiggle my eyebrows in what is meant to be a suggestive manner, “sometimes people might find me tempting. But”, I sink a little deeper into the old wingback chair, “I don’t really enjoy…carnal temptations much. They’re boring, mostly. And nowadays they’ve really lost their sensational value, if you ask me.”

I notice a smile flickering across Aziraphale’s face as he looks back up at me.

“Oh”, he makes, “oh really.”

And for some reason, he looks genuinely relieved.

“So you’re not secretly some kind of…incubus?!”

There’s still a hint of a question in his voice. I want to get rid of that.

“Are you saying I have the looks of one?” I tease him, cheekily eyeing him. He blushes again. “I mean, you should know, huh? While Oscar Wilde himself was probably writing steamy stuff about you in cutesy diaries, I was fast asleep for almost an entire century…”

I put my empty glass on the little bird’s eye Maplewood table and stretch. Aziraphale is too flustered to speak straight, it seems.

“No, Angel. Let me tell you, I definitely enjoy the more mischievous kinds of temptations.” The word reminds me. “Oh, by the way – is that why you wanted the diary? I mean, I didn’t read it – seemed a bit inappropriate…”

“No!” he says vehemently. “From where I stand, Oscar was a friend, and we shared a lot of interests, but…nothing of that sort, Crowley. Definitely. Sorry to disappoint.”

To be honest, I’m not disappointed in the slightest. I’m disproportionately relieved.

“’S alright, Angel! No need to be upset!”

I raise my hands, offering truce.

Aziraphale looks into his lap, his hand hovering over the flowers, and when he takes it away, they look like freshly plucked, or rather like still attached to the earth. And when he looks at me again, I have to blink. He takes the little roses and fastens them in his light blond curls with one swift move of his hand.

“However”, he says in a small voice, “you would make a pretty fine incubus if you ask me.”

Adorable. That was the word. I feel a bit drowsy and can’t pin down whether it’s the wine or the angel or the combination of both. Suddenly I’m glad I grew my hair out again over the past year – yes, I could just have miracled it long, but somehow that makes it feel false – because I have a braid down the right side of my head that I can fiddle with.

“More wine?” asks Aziraphale, and I briefly look up and nod and puff my cheeks. A short silence literally envelopes us, wraps us deeply into the bookshop. It’s a warmer, tighter silence than in my apartment and I, deep down, love it. Maybe that’s the snake in me.

Aziraphale places the refilled wine glasses on the table and suddenly leans over me, reaching for and doing something with said braid. Part of me wants to flinch and recoil, another part strangely enjoys the touch, like a ray of corporeal sunlight. So I just sit still and stiff until he steps back and looks at me.

“It _does_ suit you”, he says.

“Wha-“

“You should have a look at yourself”, he encourages me, hurries away and promptly returns with an oval, tarnished silver-handled mirror. He wants to hand it to me, but somehow I still can’t move. So he just holds it up in front of me.

He’s stuck the daisies and forget-me-nots into the braid and fixed the braid on the side of my head.

“It’s pretty”, he says.

The braid slips down from where he fixed it and hangs down loosely. Without actually thinking about it, my hand shoots up all of a sudden and hands him the hairband I wear on my wrist. He takes it without a word, holds it between his teeth and lays one hand flat on my head and slowly, gently combs my hair back and – uh.

A hot-cold shiver runs down my spine into every cell of my body. Like shedding skin. I shudder heavily. Aziraphale lifts his hand at once and stands stock-still. Doesn’t even breathe. Then he whispers a very small, very sad “sorry”. And I grab his hand and look up at him both at the same time, and he still has the hairband between his lips, and I just say “can you do that again? Please?”

His face softens, immediately and utterly, and he hesitantly stretches out his hand and lays it on my head and an enormous heatwave spreads into my body. He threads his fingers through the strands of my hair, softly, carefully. I shiver again, can’t help it.

“It’s just”, I croak, “no one’s ever touched me like this.”

“How do you mean?”

“Like…gently. With some kind of…”

“…love?” he asks.

I don’t reply. Just lean into the touch, the soft pads of his fingers on my scalp. He’s silent, doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t breathe. When I peer up once, he’s closed his eyes. He starts over again from my forehead and gathers all hair from the front, including the flowery braid, in some kind of half-up do with the hairband. He untangles it but it doesn’t pinch even once.

“They’re so soft”, he says quietly, almost reverently, then backs into his faded light blue velvet cushioned chair, sits down and avoids my glance. I can almost hear the books move in on us. I’m still tingling all over and my eyes are burning. Something in me, an old, slippery, almost invincible thing, wants to wipe all records of this immediately, cover it up and hope to forget. This thing has made me do things for over six thousand years now. I suppose it’s the reptile, that will only let the sun touch it. But there’s more to it. And I haven’t been that reptile for the same amount of time that I’ve known Aziraphale. Why would I change my name, twice in fact, if I still wanted to be that same reptile, be Crawly? If I want to be, and be worthy of, Anthony J. Crowley, things have to change. Or rather, I have to change things. There’s no one else who can.

“What about you?” I ask in spite of my own voice.

Aziraphale looks at me, at last, and it is as though something was melting inside him and pouring out of his mere gaze. I try to blame it on the wine but I know it’s not true.

“What?”

His voice shakes.

Oh dear, how did we get here?

“I am a demon, Angel. I’m not meant to be touched with love, I suppose. Sometimes I think” – I retch that next bit up like a bone from deep in my entrails – “that I take my lack of love out on others, other people, things, you know. Sure, it’s my job, but – all the hate, it’s gotta come from somewhere, right?”

And the more I’m with you, the worse I am at being a demon, I add in my mind.

“I have my plants, for example.”

I feel like I’m gutting myself, but ripping an ingrown, rusty old metal shard out along with it.

“And I was thinking, angels work differently, so maybe…you give all the love you don’t receive? Your books?”

Why am I doing this? This will never work. He’s perfectly fine and I’m just making a miserable fool of mys-

“Crowley”, Aziraphale mutters. “Can you…hug me?”

The words hit me. I can’t process them, really. Only obey them. Because there he stands before me with drooping shoulders and looks smaller than usually, and softer, and very vulnerable. And, oddly, starving. So I just stand up and put my arms around him. And he hangs lightly on my shoulders and places his hands on the back of my head and everything stands still just like that.

I don’t know how long we stand like this and maybe it’s beyond time.

Eventually, the angel lets go a little, his hands still on my hair, however, and says very quietly:

“This is the first time someone’s really hugged me.”

And I realize that’s true for me as well.

Humans do it all the time, but then we were never really part of what they do.

I don’t want to let him go. So I don’t. I just pull him back in again, closer. He smells of vanilla and bergamot and paper. His sheep-white jacket is the way a child might imagine a cloud to feel like, were it tangible, and his warmth seeps through it, into me.

He breathes, and he is there, and he has always been there and always will be. It was never as clear to me as in this moment, and never as utterly necessary.

Like sunlight.

A very distant memory sparks up in the back of my mind, of the closest feeling I ever had to this, and I’m suddenly aware it was before the fall. The last time I felt this warm, light and inexplicably safe. And I fear letting go as much as the pain of falling all over again. Something in me breaks open and suddenly, without preamble, I start sobbing into the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, his crumpled, pliant collar, can feel his pale blond hair at my temple. I’ve cried sometimes. It always felt like pouring myself into an endless void, just deepening whatever pain I had. Now it doesn’t. Something’s leaving me, maybe for good, while another thing streams back, like air being cleansed of carbon dioxide and refed with oxygen. And Aziraphale is my plant, my flower.

He can feel me.

“I will hold you”, he says with almost no voice.

I can feel him.

How he is a catalyst that turns sadness into joy. By definition the sunlight falling into a dark room. No matter the cost. No matter if he can’t take it. It’s taken for granted. He’s taken for granted. How can he be sunshine for everything if there’s nothing to burn on?

“I will hold you.”

My voice breaks. Everything is perfect in exactly this moment.

Whole.

Sublime.

Ineffable, he would say.

I’m shaky when I draw away from him.

“Can’t get tear stains on your jacket, can we”, I say.

“We can’t”, he replies, lids almost shut. “They would make it too precious to wear.” Then he opens his eyes and they glimmer with tears, too. “Show me your stars.”

“Alpha Centauri? Now?” My hands are still on his arms.

He just nods. I slide my hands down into his, close them tightly, watch him shut his eyes then shut mine, and only open them again when I am light, bodiless, lightyears away.

By definition, I do not know my own True Form; I cannot see it. But I can see Aziraphale’s.

Beside me, surrounded by a deep golden glow, he is a structure of silver-white light, unknown geometric forms and glistening veins and spectres of colours I had never seen and countless shiny eyes, and deep within a pulsing, star-like core.

I am aware of his thoughts and he is of mine. There is nothing but barest truth here.

_Beautiful. You are beautiful. Do you Know Yourself? No, neither angels nor demons. We might be the same, I couldn’t tell. You shine. See all and nothing. Is this it? Maybe. It’s ineffable. The stars? Yes, beautiful. Mine, yours, ours. Look, see. _

Alpha Centauri A and B shine too, bright and brighter, always together never touching, close but distant, like one to the naked eye on earth though really two.

_Like us. Intentionally. Before tonight. Created a live memorial. The Red Dwarf, C? A mutual centre. Touching point without touching. A hope. No more. Only an old portrait. Mortal. Sad. Beautiful. I miss you. We have gone too native. I miss you. Stars are nothing, compared. When you could be there. I will hold you._

I hold him. Here we stand, in the back of the bookshop, and I’m so glad we aren’t stars, so glad for our bodies that can hug, hold each other, and not collide in explosion.

“We could’ve had that a year ago”, I say softly, into Aziraphale’s ear.

“Then we wouldn’t have this now”, he replies. “Bookshop. Bodies. Earth.”

I know, and I know that he knows that I know.

He holds me. 

\---

Have a crappy little drawing for dessert:


End file.
